Contra Costa unveils vaccination map

Contra Costa County unveiled a map this week that labels vaccination rates for every day-care and kindergarten program in the county. Programs with the worst immunization records — where more than 10 percent of the kids aren’t up to date with their vaccinations — are assigned a glaring red dot.

Vaccination rates are available online — at the California Department of Public Health website — for every child-care (PDF) and kindergarten (PDF) program with 10 or more kids. But at least two Bay Area counties — Marin and, now, Contra Costa — have put up interactive maps to make it easier for parents to look for schools with high or low vaccination rates.

The Contra Costa map shows five kindergarten programs and 22 day-care centers where more than 10 percent of students are not fully vaccinated because their parents have requested a personal belief exemption. These exemptions allow parents to opt out of of mandatory school vaccination requirements. Without an exemption, California students are required by law to be immunized against nine infectious diseases before kindergarten.

Contra Costa public health officials noted that the school with the highest rate of kindergarten exemptions — East Bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante, where only half of kids were fully vaccinated — was closed briefly in 2008 during a whooping cough outbreak.

Marin County schools have some of the highest rates of personal belief exemptions in the state. On its immunization map, which only looks at kindergarten programs and not day-care centers, six schools have exemption rates of 28 to 74 percent — meaning in some schools only 26 percent of students are fully vaccinated. Another 10 schools have exemption rates of 13 to 26 percent, and 15 schools have rates of 7 to 12 percent.